Styrofoam Throne (18 page)

I went to Jack’s office and opened the door without knocking. Jack was wildly pumping away at some young plebe chick, laid out on his desk.

“Goddamn it, knock!”

“Shit, sorry!” I yelled, slamming the door.

I stood frozen behind the door. Forgetting to knock was going to flush my dreams straight down. I was gonna be fired for sure. Who survives that encounter? I started thinking of fake emergency excuses to explain later.

Then Jack yelled from behind the door, still in the act, “Kid, let’s go to lunch today. Meet me out front on the benches, I’m buying.”

Jack sat on a bench in front of the Castle with a grocery bag. Parked on the curb in front of him was his Castle Dunes hearse.

“What should we get for lunch,” I said.

Jack pulled two twenty-four-ounce, tall-boy beer cans out of the grocery bag.

“This,” he said. Jack passed me one and cracked his open, gazing out at the passing cars. His gold chain was usually floating on top of his chest hair, but now it was tangled up with gross sweat.

 
We sat on the same bench where I got caught being a beggar by Janice. And now here I was, guzzling a beer in public with the owner of Castle Dunes. Cooling off in its shadow, I told Jack my idea for the commercial. He thought it was dumb. Said it wasn’t sexy enough.

Jack didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about the Castle. He was taking in everything around him except the looming five stories behind us. I tried to drum up something else.

“Your car rules. If I was rich, I’d buy it off you,” I said.

“I wish you would! I hate that fuckin’ thing.”

“Whoa, why?”

“Why? Look at it, for chrissakes.”

It had to be almost twenty years old. There was a good amount of sea spray–induced rust and corrosion. The “Follow me to Castle Dunes” writing had faded a lot and been sloppily fixed a few times. And the doors had been keyed up.

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” I said.

“It’s good for business. And my taxes,” Jack said and took a swig. “Creepy for most chicks though. For me too. It sure wasn’t new when I got it.”

A red Corvette sped past us.

“See that?” he said, pointing his drink at the car and spilling some. “That’s what I want. That lucky fucker.”

“But whatever, you’ve got the Castle,” I said.

“It’s no red ’vette, Dono. The ’vette’ll get me laid up and down the block. One day, baby!”

“You can get laid at the Castle though,” I said and took a sip.

“Sure, yeah. But the Castle is a few months. Its purpose is not the same,” Jack said, wagging an extended finger off his beer grip. “The ’vette is year round. Not only does it get you from A to B like a motherfucker . . . but also! Also! With a ’vette . . . point B becomes Destination: Touchdown.”

Jack crushed his can and cracked another brewski. He passed me a new one but I wasn’t even half done with the first.

“You said the purpose of the Castle is not the same,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“Money. Everything else,” he took a long swig and came up for air, “is bullshit.”

I couldn’t believe that the creator of the coolest thing in the world would refer to it as bullshit. Or that it was just a cash register.

“So wait, are you, like, not into the horror stuff?” I asked.

“Not as much as I’m into Corvettes!” Jack said with a laugh.

I don’t know what I expected him to say. But I wanted to hear about how our camaraderie was based on similar interests. Not profit motivated. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

“Hey, what happened, buddy? I thought we were having a great lunch here?” he said, raising a can.

“Nothing,” I said and looked down at the ground. Jack kept waiting for me to speak. I finally let out a tangential explosion. “I don’t want to leave the Castle. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to go home.” I tried to add a more rebellious tone to it at the end, but I’m not sure it came off.

“Ah, come on, you don’t want to be roaming dark hallways your whole life, scaring the shit out of idiots,” Jack said.

It did sound stupid. Maybe if Janice said it, there’d be some good comeback. But it was depressing. I needed to enjoy the moment rather than stress its demise.

“Dono, you’re a mack. Be a mack. Get into some trouble. Do something natural and super instead of the other way around.”

There it was. He called me “mack.” I thought it would feel different. But now that I was a mack, I didn’t know how to act like one.

Jack threw his beer can in the open window of the hearse.

“Go for it,” he said.

I threw mine and it smacked the side of the window and foamed up as it tumbled inside the car.
 

“What?! You weren’t supposed to throw a full one!” Jack said and erupted in laughter. “Drink it up before you throw it away, mack.”

At the next roll call, Jack came out of the back and Rebecca, aka the Countess, ran up to him. She whispered in his ear. Rebecca was a celebrity, known around Dunes as Dracula’s sexy victim in the Castle commercial. She was a blonde super babe who looked like a prom queen five years past the crown. I never had anything to do with her because she was stuck up, and usually spent her break looking at herself in a compact mirror. Occasionally, she’d scoff at someone if they made a comment. But most of the time she kept herself busy being well groomed and on a pedestal. She was definitely the hottest chick in the Castle in the traditional sense, but she didn’t have any of the uniqueness that Melody had.

Jack called out the day’s assignments and said I was going to do the Maiden Slayer room. I’d be the druid that stabs a woman dressed in a white nightgown on an ivy-covered concrete slab. I don’t know if the whisper to Jack had anything to do with it, but he announced that Rebecca was going to be the maiden. It wasn’t her usual thing. Her normal role was Countess Bathory.

This was the first time I’d be working with a female “celebrity,” so I was a little nervous but also excited to have some better scenery than usual. I think Melody noticed. She came up to me at the tables before I started and said, “No matter what Rebecca says, don’t believe her.” I thought that was weird but okay, I won’t believe her. What was there to not believe?

I showed up in the room and Rebecca was already laid out on her back on the stone slab.

“Hey, there, that’s a big knife you’ve got,” she said with a wink.

If she wasn’t so hot it would have been corny as hell. I laughed and mock stabbed her.

“I’m glad we could finally work together,” she said.

“Yeah, it should be cool.” She was coming on strong for a person who had never paid attention to me. But I enjoyed being hit on and thought as long as I didn’t do anything, it would be harmless.

Rebecca pulled out a silver flask.

“Want a sip?”

“No, I’m cool. It’s early.”

“Oh, come on. You’re no fun,” she said, holding it out and pushing her chest together.

I couldn’t refuse her delivery. I took a small sip and pretended like it was a bigger one.

“Yay!”

We went to work, and I thought it was going pretty well. Most of the male plebes who came through would perv out on Rebecca. They’d stare at her as I yelled an incantation to some four-syllable demon I’d made up. Then I’d stab her, she’d writhe around erotically, and the guys would hoot and holler.

“You’re really good at this,” she said in between plebes.

“Thanks, so are you.”

“Let’s take another shot,” she said.

“Okay.” I took the flask and had a nice pull on it. Getting a little buzzed at work helped make the time go much faster. That and staring at Rebecca.
 

A few hours and shots passed by, and I was getting drunk. I started slurring the incantation and Rebecca’s writhing got even more sexual. Plebe traffic trickled down in the early evening and Rebecca started laying into me thick.

“You’re really cute, you know that?” she said.

“Thanks, so are you,” I said. My blood was running hot from her flask and the “Let’s do something bad” look in her eye.

“Really?” she pretended to ask. “What’s your favorite part about me?”

“Um, I don’t know. It’s all pretty awesome.”

“Oh!” She pulled my druid robe down toward her and kissed me. It flowed right into a heavy makeout session. She pulled me on top of her, and I immediately forgot about anyone coming through. It was a completely different way of making out than what Melody and I did. She was greedy with her lips and more aggressive with her body. I got carried away and gave her all the tongue I had. My head was spinning with the booze and her hair pulling when, just then, Melody came into the room whistling a theme from a horror movie, dressed as an evil gypsy. She held a lantern and quickly dropped it.

Rebecca propped herself up and yelled at Melody, “That’s for fucking Ronnie, slut!”

Melody stared at me in shock. I had been set up. The stone slab was a honey trap. Rebecca wanted nothing to do with me other than some revenge I didn’t even know about.
 

“It’s not what you think,” I said. It was as much a cliché as it was a lie. What was to think about? I was dry humping the Castle prom queen.

Melody ran off and I caught her in the next room.
 

“Hey,” I said, not knowing what to follow that up with. I grabbed her arm but she shook me loose.

“I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t, but you did,” she said and stormed away.

I chased after her but my robe tripped me up. I staggered and fell as she lost me behind the walls. I felt so dumb lying on the floor in my costume. I was supposed be a fake monster, not a real one. My corpse paint had smeared all over my face from making out. It sank into my pores and rotted me from the inside out. The stage fog buried me in smoke.

I went back to the Maiden Slayer room and shot daggers at the Countess, who was taking another sip.

“What the fuck?!”

“Hey, don’t be mad. Have a drink,” she said, holding out the flask again. I’d had enough.

“Who the fuck’s Ronnie?”

“Tssh. Ask her. She’s a fucking bitch. It’s not like I made you hook up with me.”

The rest of the day was awful. We still had to work together and my buzz was wearing off, making the remaining hours pass in slow motion. I changed my incantation to be based around punishment “for unlawful carnal knowledge,” the acronym for “fuck.” And I got way more pissed when delivering the fake blows.

“You’re creepy,” she said.

“I hate you,” I told her. I went from humping to hate in a pretty short time. The Castle had gotten to me. I went on break.

I saw Melody at the end of the tables, flirting up some random druid with reckless abandon. She shot a look at me that said, “Stay away.” I couldn’t even defend myself. If I had the chance, I don’t know what defense there was anyway.

10

“Dude, the Countess is a land clam. You need some metal,” Renaldo said, passing me a joint under the pier.

I was bumming and didn’t feel that the Tion demo would make anything better.

“I dunno, man. I lost what I needed.”

“No no no. Fuck that. Dude, King. The fucking King is coming to the Arena Dome. You gotta see a metal show.”

“That Tion show was kinda weird.”

“Oh, fuck Tion, dude. I’m talking about King!”

“I thought you said Tion ruled?”

“They rule The Ditch but King rules the fucking world, man. I’ll get us tickets.”

“How much?”

“On me, dude. Least I can do to keep your sorry ass from crying. We’ll meet tomorrow at the Arena Dome gate, like, at eight.”

“What if Melody’s there? We were supposed to go to that.”

“Bro, metal is the great uniter. If you want to hook back up, then that’s the place. But if you want to piss it all out, you can do that too. It’s a no brainer, brah.”

I had no idea what to do. When Melody turned her back on me, it felt like she took all of my bones with her. Maybe I knew what I was doing but I didn’t know who I was. I went from semi-directionless to full-blown lost. But Renaldo’s confidence and unwavering friendship led me to believe in his metal plan.

Renaldo went to the show way early to sell weed in the parking lot, so I hitchhiked later. I thumbed it for about ten minutes in front of the freeway on-ramp before a metalhead in his twenties who called himself Axe and his silent, permed girlfriend picked me up. His bumper was plastered in KRIF stickers that proclaimed it rocked. The radio station’s promo spots featured a deep, monster truck rally–type of voice that bellowed, “
KRIFFFFF
, break the knob off!”

“Going to the King show?” I asked.

“Fuckin’ fuck yeah, brother. Get in!”

His girlfriend made me jealous I wasn’t with mine. Not that I still had one. If ever.

“Do not fucking hesitate, man. You know?” Axe nodded his head and turned it into a headbang.

“Yeah, totally,” I said. Shouldn’t there have been something before that message of his?

“I wouldn’t be here if I did. You wouldn’t be in my car,” he said.

I didn’t say anything as I began to worry that his stoned notions might be veiled threats.

“Let me tell you a story,” he continued. “Sorry you have to hear this again, baby,” he said, putting a hand on her thigh, “but fuck, it’s so good! About a week ago, I was doing some drywall out on Sea Grave Road, you know? Some fuckers tore down about a month of my work, but whatever—I got hired again to do it all over, so I guess I shouldn’t be pissed.”

Oh shit. Sea Grave. I tried to keep my eyes from darting left to right.

“Anyways, I’m eating lunch and we’re all listening to The Riff on the radio. They were doing that thing were they’d play one second of a song, and whoever called in and identified it right would get King tickets. So they got my ear, we’re listening and they play the one second. I know what it is immediately, brother. It’s fucking King’s ‘Gypsy Dream.’ Kinda rare B-side, I guess. I tell everyone, ‘That’s fucking “Gypsy Dream,” where’s the nearest pay phone?’ All the guys are just like, ‘Man, no, it’s not.’ So I’m like, ‘Fuck you, guys, it’s “Gypsy Dream.”’ But I thought maybe they’re right. The DJ gets back on and goes ‘No one’s identified the song yet, here it is again.’ I’m telling you—it’s fucking ‘Gypsy Dream.’ You know that part where it’s all ‘Da na naaaa na naaaa da na naaaa na naaaaa?’ It’s the first ‘Da na.’”